Sure, Apple will most likely still make far more money per sold iPhone device than competitors will per Android phone, but the trend is clear: as much as I love my iPhone, it will be relegated to a ~10% market share figure within a few quarters.

It took a little longer than "a few quarters", but here we are. Android has revolutionised the smartphone market. I'm not particularly happy about that (both Android and Samsung are far too dominant, which is bad for the market and thus for consumers), but there it is.

Today, all three of these features are rapidly disappearing on recent and upcoming Android smartphones... leaving us with a plethora of sealed black-box devices that essentially look and act like an iPhone except with less UI polish and poorer quality hardware. Plus a profusion of millions of devices running slightly different variants of Android that can't be updated and will turn into security exploit nightmares as the years go on. Thanks, Android, for the legacy!

I'll probably get downvoted again for this, but those features are disappearing for a reason. Yes, they probably contributed to the rise of Android(specifically the Moto Droid), but they were solutions to problems that aren't as big as they were back then.

1. Battery technology has improved somewhat, as well as power consumption. Do you really want to replace batteries? I'd rather have a larger one that doesn't degrade.

2. When phones came with only 512Mb of storage this was important, but it creates partitions and separation of data. With 32Gb models becoming common, this is less important.

3. With today's huge screens and great software keyboards, most people are happy without a hardware keyboard. Yes a few of you "get off my lawn" people love them, but face it most don't.

Still the reason these features existed are because of Android's non-locked down nature and multiple hardware vendors. That still stands today and for the foreseeable future.

I agree that #2 and #3 aren't really an issue for a lot of people, although unfortunately it doesn't really change my personal preference. However, I still feel very strongly that removable batteries are vastly superior. Li-Ion cells still do degrade after a few years of normal use. So a simple replacement battery for less than $10 after a few years makes the phone perform like new again. No trips to the service center, no downtime without a phone. Complete battery failure is another potential problem that can be easily solved by changing the battery. I personally had a Droid 2 that somehow started to shutdown the OS but got hung up, causing it to drain the battery until it tripped the protection circuit, resulting in an un-chargeable cell. Again, a simple battery replacement by me fixed the phone. And a friend of mine left his Android inside an extremely hot car on a summer day, ruining the battery. So, he changed the battery, phone works like new. Try that with a newer sealed Android phone.